Badlands
by RaeC
Summary: GEN: FutureFic - Set in a post apocalyptic future, a nation struggles to reclaim its past and its heroes. *New* Chapter One uploaded.
1. Prologue

Badlands 

_Prologue _

They say you could see the Metropolis skyline from the watchtower in the Before Time. Before the country was split, torn apart by Civil War. They say it shined in the setting sun; the rays glinting off of the windows like a halo around the seat of power for LuthorCorp. They say the city teamed with life, held millions of people in her glass towers. What I wouldn't give to have seen the city in its heyday. 

Metropolis, where the war between East and West began and ended. The country surrounding the city now is a wasteland of human and mutant remains. Nothing survived the bombing but the cockroaches and the rats. We only know that because we can see them scurrying in the dark with our looking glasses. Yet another remnant left over from the past that we've adapted to our future. Like the books and stories we've dredged from the litter and our memories. 

I'd heard the story of Giants and Madmen; who hadn't? It's a tale we all grew up on. The youth of the new nations running through the wreck of civilizations past, playing our games of superhero and super villain. Racing past the corroded symbols of the men themselves nearly overgrown with vines and weeds we chased each other, swooping, hollering, blasting each other with pretend guns. We didn't understand then. We didn't know. But we know now. 

We know how cruel the game we played really was. A re-enactment of history, of when the walls went up and bombs came down and man tried to blow himself apart. When the lives of two powerful men, who in their own way tried to save us, ended in the sea of destruction before me. The charred, empty land that nature had yet to reclaim even these hundreds of years later. At least, that's the best reckoning. 

And that's where I'm going tomorrow, into hell itself. Hopefully, to find our heroes who had to be left behind in the ruin. To give a proper burial for men of vision who sought to end the fighting before it begun, but whom humanity ignored. Humanity which needed instead to destroy itself in some warped attempt to learn that pride _is_ a sin. Power, corruption, greed - these men understood. 'I was wrong', they did not. 

It is said, in the story of Giants and Madmen, that the sins of the father fell upon on the shoulders of his son, and that was the end of the nation. That even Superman could not save him in the end. Try as he might, pride won. To save those he loved, Superman gave his life. And the world won. 

And that is where I go, into the badlands. To find my piece of history and bring them home.


	2. Innocent

_Chapter 1 - Innocent _

They say you can measure the strength of a man by his enemies, by the trials he has to overcome or endure. Enemies that may or may not be tangible, a person, a place, a time, ourselves. It is our enemies that define who and what we are. My enemy has always been my father, seven times removed. I am the last of my line, and for that I am thankful. I have no wish to inflict this life on any offspring of my own. 

I didn't understand when I was young, didn't understand how a man's enemies created who he would become. My mind was filled with the stories of heroes and saviors and how great men became giants, living legends within their own time. But you cannot be 'great' without an event, a deed, an evil to defeat first. I'd always thought I'd grow up to be one of the good guys. Little did I know that I _wouldn't_. People have long memories and even children are not immune. 

Night falls over the land as dark as my thoughts, and with it comes the dangers night brings, the reason we still have the watchtowers. We work in pairs, one watching while the other sleeps, and then halfway through the night we switch places. It's our job to defend the weak. We're trained to be ruthless killers from our teens, chosen because we have some sort of ability with speed, weapons, or enhanced senses. There are things out there that can break through the barriers, slip through the cracks in the field that is weakening day by day. Things that move in the night that we cannot see, only hear scurrying as they pass the markers. 

On the long nights when I keep watch, my thoughts will not keep silent. I can see the people below scurrying back and forth as they eek out an existence that is soon to fail. The towers will no longer protect them against the things that stalk the night. There will be no comforts in the day. It's not pride that sends me on my mission tomorrow. It is the needs of the people. People who will never understand what I do or why or even thank me for it, but it no longer matters. I do it because someone should have long ago. 

People need their heroes to survive. They need someone to look up to. They need friends, to see beyond themselves, beyond their insecurities, their fears. To see a person they can be proud of, and having heroes gives them a standard. That's the best we can be. Him. Or her. And if we are half as good as our heroes, then we satisfied. Otherwise, we are nothing more than the sum of our fears. 

Sighing at my maudlin thoughts, I shift into a more comfortable position. My partner, John Black, is keeping the watch. He knows I'm awake as surely as I'd know if he was. We've been together too long and know each other too well for it to be any other way. He's been my partner for most of my life. Watchers never last long, ten years at most, but for some reason, we've managed to out-distance the odds. 

We've been Watchers for twenty years, since I was sixteen and he nineteen. We both have the scars of battles won and lost. And I can't envision a future without him by my side. For as long as my line has lived in the After Time, there's been a Black by our side. Even my mother was a Black. Our futures seem to be as intertwined as our pasts. 

It will be a long day tomorrow and I really should get some sleep. But I can't. I can't stop wondering what I'll find out there. Whether I'll find what I'm looking for or come back empty-handed. Will I find my end in the dark streets of the dead city or will I finally find peace? 

I guess that's the question I want answered the most. Peace of mind. Something this tower used to provide when I was still young enough to pretend that I could hide. I'd climb it, seeking solitude when the jeers became too much. My own little castle in the sky. The Watchers left me alone to my thoughts, thinking that I was preparing for my future. They were right. Just for the wrong reasons. I used to watch the people from the towers, peering down from the safety of my castle. Young and old, tall and short, dozens of them all shapes and sizes and colors mixed together. My favorite days were when the hunters returned. Not because of the thought of fresh meat, but because of the way the people ran to welcome them home. I wanted that for myself. 

I heard the people as they huddled about the campfires, telling stories from the past. Usually their voices lulled me to sleep, their quiet sounds telling me that they were safe for yet another night. 

Tonight, however, story hour was keeping me awake. 

"In the Before Time, when the day was bright and the sky blue, Giants walked the land…" I tune out the tale before it has even begun. I don't need to hear the story of Giants and Madmen; I know it by heart, by rote. It is, after all, the story of my family. Of when the Luthors of the world tried to destroy it and the Kents tried to save it. And one man stood in the middle of the madness trying to hold it altogether. I rolled over to watch John patrol the edges of the tower and think instead. 

They say that the Watchtowers weren't built to search for enemies, but to watch for the return of a friend. And as I waited for the sun to rise, I realized how futile that hope must have been. I've imagined it many a night; a man or woman sitting day after day waiting, watching for some sign from the city, the Badlands, the dark recesses of the new mountains for a long lost friend to come home. No one even remembers who built the towers, only why, and they are more than happy to put them to another use. That statement is too cynical even for me and I'm probably as cynical as they make them. 

Which only leads me back to the reason John and I are leaving the city tomorrow. We are searching for the past, hoping against hope that we find it. And the watchtowers will wait for our return. Life comes full circle. 

John nudges me and I realize that the day has begun. Our relief will be here soon, young kids barely old enough to shave. How sad is that? The future rests on the shoulders of children making them old, before their time. And the people below don't care, so long as their borders are defended. They view it as a necessary evil. They give up their children to protect themselves. John touches my shoulder. He can sense the disgust pouring off of me. His blue eyes hold the sorrow I know is mirrored in my own. 

"We make our own choices." I nod, not daring myself to speak. It's true; no child is allowed to train without agreeing to the terms, knowing that they are choosing death over life. But what kind of society is it that breeds its children on duty and honor and sacrifice without ever giving them a reason _why_? These boys and girls don't know what they are about to face. They are protected from the mutants until the first time they face them in battle. They are only told that the greatest service they can perform for their people is to protect them from the Badlands. And the kids fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. Dying a hero's death for the honor of mankind. 

How many children have died before ever reaching their eighteenth birthday? How many have we lost? That's the main reason John and I take the night watches. To save as many as we can. The mutants only attack at night, when they can't be seen in the dark. 

There's not much time before we lose what little protection the people have left. And then all the children will be sacrifices to the new race. As each year goes by, there seems to be fewer and fewer of the people who can protect our civilization. The advantages that make the children such easy sacrifices to the Watchtowers are slowly dying out. As much as I hate parts of this society, I can't let it die. If the people die, then man dies. Humanity loses. All the hope for our civilization, for the people, rests in the tattered remains of a dead city. 

No one is really sure how long it had been since the world ended and the new one began. The best guesses of our scientists rested on records stored in a machine that began talking one day. It could have been three hundred years or a thousand. They said it was the power of the sun breaking through the cracks in the field that woke it. That was our first indication that we had to find new ways to protect ourselves. 

At night the machine was curiously silent, as if it had never spoken. We can only assume it's damaged, like all the others that we barely understand how to operate and can't fix. There was a hope that this machine could teach us. All the books, the paper left over from the past, told of teaching machines. But there is so little that had been salvaged. Great houses, where the books once lived, had burned to the ground. All that was left, were pieces of books we found in the rubble. I do not understand why they stole the knowledge from us. Or who. 

Perhaps it was to save the people? I read a book once where the power of the sun was harnessed into a single cylinder. To me, it was a form of magic. A thing that could fly through the clouds and land in a place far away. I don't know how that could be a bad thing, but just as I did not understand half of the machines left from the Before Time, I was baffled by the knowledge that their books held. 

The only thing we know for certain is that it was hate that started the war. The hate of a father who used all the knowledge of the Before Time to destroy his son. 

Man had destroyed himself and no force, be it heaven or earth, had been able to stop it. 

We needed Superman. We had to find him. Otherwise our world would die. And I, for one, wasn't ready to give up. It was told in the story of Giants and Madmen how the world came to end. How grief stole the last superhero from the world. How Superman had hidden from the world since the time of his friends' passing. They say that when he loved, he gave his whole self…to his parents, his friends, to the girl who once lived next door. Lex Luthor was the last of those to survive in the Before Time and only because his father wanted him to see the end of all things. A madman truly. 

We needed a hero. Not to save us from ourselves; we did the impossible on a daily basis. We lived. We needed a hero to look up to and we needed help. The story of Giants and Madmen told of mutants much more powerful than our own and the men who defeated them to try to save a way of life. We needed Superman to come home. And if it meant that we had to find the body of Lex Luthor and bring it back to the people, then John and I would. For wherever Lex Luthor went, Superman followed. So it was told in the dying days of the Before Time, when my family history had just begun. 

My name is Nathan and I have vowed that the sins of my father end with me. 

Our relief finally showed and John and I climbed down from the tower heading for our room. It was time. We had relatively little to do to prepare. Neither one of us had much in the way of clothes or personal belongings. As was the custom of our people, what we could not carry with us would be given away or left behind for whomever would next occupy this space. It was a cold, harsh world we lived in. Nothing was left to waste. Grabbing our packs, we left, only stopping at the outer rim marker to pay our respects to the leader of our people at the gate. 

"Captain." The slender, diminutive woman barely came to my chest, but she held the power of the people in her hands. Her family had held the position since the time of the break. 

"Akenda." I nodded, John by my side, his body as stiff as my own. I had hoped that she would forget we were leaving. 

"May you return in peace." She spoke the ritual words with barely a hint of the resentment I knew she held for me and my kind. The spark in her dark eyes spoke of her true feelings - she hoped that I would not return at all. 

"May you live in peace until I do." I answered, John's hand on my shoulder keeping me grounded. We both bowed to Akenda and pushed past her. The Badlands waited. On the other side - salvation. 


End file.
